Benjamin Mazar

Benjamin Mazar was born in 1906 in Ciechanowiec, Poland.[1] Also known by his original surname Maisler, he studied at the universities of Berlin and Giessen and settled in Mandatory Palestine in 1929, beginning his career in archaeology and historical research.[1]

From 1929 to 1943, Mazar served as secretary of the Jewish Palestine Exploration Society.[1] Under the Society's auspices, he excavated at Ramat Rahel in 1931 and began uncovering the ancient necropolis of Bet She'arim in 1936.[5] These early responsibilities placed him within the institutional development of Jewish archaeological research in the country.

Mazar joined the staff of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1943. In 1951, he was appointed professor of the history of the Jewish people in the biblical period and the archaeology of Palestine; he became rector in 1952 and president in 1953, holding both positions until 1961.[1] On January 2, 1961, while serving as university president, he addressed the 25th Zionist Congress on the achievements and problems of the Hebrew University.[6]

By 1960, Mazar was president of the Israel Exploration Society, and he also served as chairman of the Archaeological Board of Israel and as a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities.[1][5] From 1950 to 1989, he headed the editorial board of the biblical encyclopedia Enẓiklopedyah Mikra'it.[1]

Mazar published more than 300 articles, including excavation reports, as well as books on the history and archaeology of Palestine. His publications included the historical atlas Israel in Biblical Times (1941) and the first volume of Beth Shearim (1944).[1] His book The Mountain of the Lord, published in New York in 1975, examined the Temple Mount and was cited in later scholarship on the site.[4][7]

Mazar directed excavations at several major sites during the pre-state and early Israeli periods. His work included Ramat Rahel in 1931, Bet She'arim from 1936 to 1940, Tell Qasile beginning in 1949, and En-Gedi from 1957 to 1966.[1]

His contributions to the En-Gedi project appeared in En-Gedi Excavations I as three chapters: "History of the oasis of En-Gedi," "Surveys and soundings at En-Gedi," co-authored with other researchers, and "Agriculture at En-Gedi." The history chapter first appeared in 1966, while the consolidated volume was published in 2007.[8] Together, these projects extended his fieldwork across sites and periods ranging from biblical antiquity to late antique Jewish history.

After the Six-Day War and the unification of Jerusalem, Israeli archaeological institutions discussed new excavations in the city. At the start of 1968, the Israel Exploration Society took the initiative with encouragement from Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kollek. A planning committee chaired by Mazar included N. Avigad, M. Avi-Yonah, Y. Yadin, A. Biran, J. Aviram, and Kollek. Mazar was asked to direct the first phase of systematic excavation outside the Temple Mount's southern and western walls.[9] The work was undertaken by the Israel Exploration Society and the Hebrew University's Institute of Archaeology, in cooperation with the Israel Academy of Humanities and Sciences and the National Parks Authority.[9]

A later account reports that Mazar initially sought permission to excavate at the Western Wall, but religious affairs minister Zerah Warhaftig and the Chief Rabbinate rejected the request because they regarded the wall as a place of prayer.[2] He then turned to the Southern Wall. Permission there was granted on the condition that the work be described as "uncovering the Wall" rather than "an archaeological dig," amid disagreements within the Chief Rabbinate over the holiness of the Mount's walls and possible disruption to prayer services.[10] The excavation subsequently continued along the Western Wall between the Southern Wall and the Mograbi Gate.[10]

Work began on February 28, 1968, with Mazar and his assistant Meir Ben-Dov leading the operations.[2][9] The first season continued through mid-October and focused on Ard el-Khatuniyye at the Ophel, near the Southern Wall and the western slope facing the Tyropoeon Valley. A limited area at the southern end of the Western Wall near Robinson's Arch was also cleared.[9] The next season extended the excavation north beyond Robinson's Arch and southwest toward the Dung Gate. The project used 100-by-100-metre grid squares subdivided into 5-by-5-metre units to investigate topography and settlement history through stratigraphic analysis and dating.[9]

The excavations documented remains from the First Temple period through the Ottoman era. An account of the work reports that a paved road found at the convergence of the Southern and Western Walls was Jerusalem's main thoroughfare in the late Second Temple period.[2] A fallen stone from the southwestern corner of the Temple Mount bore a fragmentary Hebrew inscription beginning "The shofar blast di..." A proposed completion, "The shofar blast divides between the sacred and the profane," suggested that the stone may have marked a place where priests signaled the beginning and end of the Sabbath, although the reading and interpretation remain tentative.[2]

Near Robinson's Arch and the Western Wall, the excavation also recovered a hoard of "Year Four" coins minted during the final year of the Jewish revolt against Rome, dated to 69–70 CE.[11] Among the first season's finds was a fourth-century lamp bearing a nine-branched menorah, a shofar, and an unclear object that may have been a goblet. Mazar suggested that a Jewish pilgrim might have left the lamp but did not present the identification as certain.[9] The excavation also produced a stone-vessel fragment inscribed with the Hebrew word translated as "sacrifice" and two stone weights marked "year 5."[9]

The excavation account reports that the Hulda Gates, the two principal southern entrances to the Temple Mount during the Second Temple period, were exposed together with their large staircase.[2] The western gate, known as the Double Gate, lies beneath the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and both gates remained sealed. A network of Jewish ritual baths, or mikva'ot, was also documented near the gates and associated with worshippers ascending the Temple Mount.[2]

Four substantial Umayyad palaces were reported in the area between the Southern Wall and the Old City walls, west of the southern section of the Western Wall.[2] Their rooms featured carved pairs of pillars supporting stone arches. In the basement of one palace, excavators found a reused pillar bearing an inscription of the Tenth Roman Legion and a Latin inscription naming the emperors Vespasian and Titus.[2]

Mazar's preliminary report described a large Umayyad building south of a paved street near the Southern Wall. The partially cleared structure was estimated at approximately 80 by 95 metres, with walls 2.20–2.50 metres thick, and incorporated architectural material from earlier buildings. Mazar considered several possible functions, including a government house, a pilgrim guest house, or a palace, but stated that no definitive identification had been reached. He also tentatively proposed that a large associated installation may have been used for dyeing.[9]

The site contained Byzantine structures beneath the foundations and floors of the Umayyad buildings, a medieval building abutting the Southern Wall and Al-Aqsa Mosque, and additional remains from numerous periods.[2] Finds included Byzantine lintels with crosses and red-painted seven-branched menorahs dated by the excavation account to either the Persian conquest or the early Umayyad period.[2] Stratigraphic evidence documented successive Herodian, Roman, Byzantine, Umayyad, Abbasid, and Fatimid phases in this area of Jerusalem.[9]

Mazar's excavations continued through 1978 on behalf of the Hebrew University's Institute of Archaeology.[3] The resulting material continued to be studied and published after the fieldwork ended. In 1989, his granddaughter, archaeologist Eilat Mazar, published an excavation report on the Ophel work conducted by her grandfather.[12]

Benjamin Mazar's influence combined extensive fieldwork, leadership of the Hebrew University, decades of editorial work on Enẓiklopedyah Mikra'it, and the training of younger archaeologists and Bible scholars.[1] His Temple Mount excavations added major evidence for both the Herodian and early Islamic histories of Jerusalem.[4]

The work conducted with Meir Ben-Dov was especially important for the study of the Umayyad period. The discovery of large Umayyad buildings alongside Herodian remains transformed archaeological understanding of a period that had previously been less visible in the physical record.[4] Post-1967 Israeli scholarship also used written sources and archaeological remains to reconstruct the Temple Mount's Second Temple-period form.[4]

Mazar received the Israel Prize for Jewish Studies in 1968.[1] Over two generations, he was credited with training most Israeli archaeologists and Bible scholars, extending his influence well beyond his own excavations.[1] An archaeologist who later worked at Mount Ebal recalled meeting Mazar every month or two, receiving books to read, discussing research questions, and exchanging jokes in Yiddish. He described Mazar as a guiding influence on his work.[13]

A later excavation account states that Sari Nusseibeh, son of Anwar Nusseibeh, visited the site and worked alongside the Jewish excavators, taking particular interest in the Umayyad-period discoveries.[2] The same account says the excavation proceeded southward from the Southern Wall and did not extend northward beneath the Temple Mount compound. It also reports that a passage near the Hulda Gates connecting the excavation area with the compound's surface was blocked in coordination with the Waqf.[2]

Mazar's excavations near the Temple Mount took place in a politically and religiously sensitive landscape. The condition that the Southern Wall work be described as "uncovering the Wall" rather than an archaeological dig reflected tension between the Chief Rabbinate's concerns about holiness and disruption to prayer and archaeologists' plans for systematic excavation.[10]

A scholarly study notes that excavations south of the Temple Mount were presented in some political discourse as part of the Israeli-Arab national conflict and as an attempt to test Muslim control of the site; it does not establish that Mazar personally held that intention.[4] The excavation's formal mandate was the systematic archaeological investigation of areas outside the compound's southern and western walls.[9] Mazar's preliminary report consistently distinguishes excavated evidence from hypotheses and leaves uncertain identifications, including the function of the large Umayyad building, explicitly unresolved.[9]